...a calamity compounded by poverty and neglect...

Now is not the time to heap blame...now is not the time to attack people for what went wrong in the preparation for Katrina. Now is the time to help. I strongly encourage readers to donate...as much as you can...to the Red Cross (www.redcross.org). But, please come back after you donate to read a perspective about one of the reasons Katrina was so bad.

I'm posting a big piece of an article I found on the Asian Tribune website. The entire article may be found at

http://www.asiantribune.com/show_article.php?id=2678

but I think this portion is particularly disturbing. It talks about the lack of preparedness to deal with hurricanes, etc. The title of the article is Hurricane Katrina: a calamity compounded by poverty and neglect. The article reports, very clearly, that governmental policies that dictate how to set priorities contributed to the catastrophe; not that government could have prevented the hurricane, but it could have used its resources to minimize the horror.

Lack of preparation

As always with a devastating event like Hurricane Katrina, voices are raised claiming that nothing could have been done to prevent the catastrophe. Such declarations are thoroughly false. While it would have been impossible to prevent all damage from the hurricane, there were definite measures that could have been taken to minimize the impact. That such steps were not taken is despite the fact that the areas devastated by Katrina lie along a path that has repeatedly suffered massive hurricane damage in the past. New Orleans is particularly vulnerable. It lies below sea level, surrounded on three sides by water—the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain—from which it is protected only by a network of levees and pumps. For years scientists and engineers have warned that a major hurricane could inflict catastrophic damage on the city. After Hurricane Betsy, the levee system was modified to withstand the force of a category three hurricane, but Katrina, when it hit land, was stronger—a category four storm. It was only a matter of time before a category four or five storm hit the city, but government officials failed to commit the resources necessary to shore up the levee system to withstand an event of that magnitude, including raising the height of the barriers to prevent the sort of flooding that occurred in the Lower Ninth Ward. The city depends on pumps to push water uphill, away from the city and back into the surrounding lake and river. However, these pumps operate on electricity, which has been entirely cut off since the hurricane struck. The pumps have apparently ceased operating. According to an article in the New Orleans CityBusiness, from February 7, 2005, the US Army Corps of Engineers “identified millions of dollars in flood and hurricane protection projects in the New Orleans district,” however “chances are... most projects will not be funded in the president’s 2006 fiscal year budget.” The article noted that between 2001 and 2005, the amount spent on such projects declined from $147 million to $82 million. “Unfunded projects include widening drainage canals, flood-proofing bridges and building pumping stations in Orleans and Jefferson parishes.” Officials have deemed a revamping of the levee system to protect the city against a category four or five storm prohibitively expensive, but the cost would have been far less than the damages caused by Hurricane Katrina. That these resources have not been marshaled to address the pressing needs of social infrastructure in New Orleans is due to the fact that the priorities of the government and the American ruling class lie on an entirely different plain. The attempts by the city to evacuate the population likewise demonstrated the lack of preparation in addressing the needs of the residents, particularly the poorest sections. In spite of an enormous traffic backlog, most residents with transportation were able to get out before the storm hit. But many of those without transportation were left stranded. In 2002, the Times-Picayune wrote a series entitled “Washed Away,” in which it discussed what would happen in the event of a major hurricane. “100,000 people without transportation will be especially threatened,” the newspaper wrote. “A large population of low-income residents do not own cars and would have to depend on an untested emergency public transportation system to evacuate them.” The lack of preparation for the city’s poor was revealed in an article that appeared in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, which was otherwise devoted to extolling the efficiency of the city’s evacuation measures. “Mayor Nagin urged churches Sunday morning to arrange evacuations for those who might not have access to a car. He mentioned Amtrak and Greyhound as possibilities... The mayor encouraged people leaving the city to pick up anyone they knew who didn’t have means to evacuate, but acknowledged that many poor New Orleans residents lacked a clear way to get out.” Even in the first days after the hurricane, it has become clear that the tragedy could have been much reduced if adequate measure had been put in place. As we learn more about the events, there will no doubt be further revelations regarding the social components of this disaster.